A concise, accessible introduction to language endangerment and why it is one of the most urgent challenges of our times.


58% of the world's languages--or, approximately 4,000 languages--are endangered. When we break this figure down, we realize that roughly ten percent of languages have fewer than ten language keepers. And, if one language stops being used every three months, this means that in the next 100 years, if we do nothing, 400 more languages will become dormant. In

B>An argument against the ideology of domesticity that separates work from home; lavishly illustrated, with architectural proposals for alternate approaches to working and living.br>;/b>br>br>Despite the increasing numbers of people who now work from home, in the popular imagination the home is still understood as the sanctuary of privacy and intimacy. Living is conceptually and definitively separated from work. This book argues against such a separation, countering the prevailing ideology of domesticity with a series of architectural projects that illustrate alternative approaches. Less a monograph than a treatise, richly illustrated, the book combines historical research and design proposals to reenvision home as a cooperative structure in which it is possible to live and work and in which labor is socialized beyond the family--freeing inhabitants from the sense of property and the burden of domestic labor.;br>;br>The projects aim to move the house beyond the dichotomous logic of male/female, husband/wife, breadwinner/housewife, and private/public. They include the reinvention of single-room occupancy as a new model for affordable housing; the reimagining of the simple tower-and-plinth prototype as host to a multiplicity of work activities and enlivening street life; and a plan for a modular, adaptable structure meant to house a temporary dweller. All of these design projects conceive of the house not as a commodity, the form of which is determined by its exchange value, but as an infrastructure defined by its use value.br>;br>br>br>; Lire la suite Fermer

A concise introduction to cyborg theory that examines the way in which technology is situated, political, and embodied.

This introduction to cyborg theory provides a critical vantage point for analyzing the claims around emerging technologies like automation, robots, and AI.

A serious look at competition problems in tech markets and whether antitrust law can help address them.


In recent years, the astronomical rise of tech giants like Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft has been criticized as anticompetitive, and many have wondered if antitrust law can help protect workers and consumers. In

An engaging and comprehensive exploration of how fundamental ideas in political and legal thought shape the governance of blockchain communities, and are, in turn, shaped by blockchain technology.


How can digital cash truly be "trustless"? What does it mean that blockchain offers a new paradigm of the "rule of code"? How are decisions made when a blockchain system faces an emergency, and who gets to make those decisions? In

An eminently readable overview of the history and physics of galaxies.


In

How Big Tech is taking advantage of us, how AI is making it;worse, and how we can create a thriving, AI-positive world.

On balance, will AI help humanity or harm it? AI could revolutionize science, medicine, and technology, and deliver us a world of abundance and better health. Or it could be a disaster, leading to the downfall of democracy, or even our extinction. In

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs has had a dramatic impact on computer science curricula over the past decade. This long-awaited revision contains changes throughout the text. There are new implementations of most of the major programming systems in the book, including the interpreters and compilers, and the authors have incorporated many small changes that reflect their experience teaching the course at MIT since the first edition was published. A new theme has been introduced that emphasizes the central role played by different approaches to dealing with time in computational models: objects with state, concurrent programming, functional programming and lazy evaluation, and nondeterministic programming. There are new example sections on higher-order procedures in graphics and on applications of stream processing in numerical programming, and many new exercises. In addition, all the programs have been reworked to run in any Scheme implementation that adheres to the IEEE standard.
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Here is the world's most famous master plan for seizing and holding power. Astonishing in its candor The Prince even today remains a disturbingly realistic and prophetic work on what it takes to be a prince . . . a king . . . a president. When, in 1512, Machiavelli was removed from his post in his beloved Florence, he resolved to set down a treatise on leadership that was practical, not idealistic. In The Prince he envisioned would be unencumbered by ordinary ethical and moral values; his prince would be man and beast, fox and lion. Today, this small sixteenth-century masterpiece has become essential reading for every student of government, and is the ultimate book on power politics. Lire la suite Fermer

Feminist science fiction that anticipates a post-patriarchal future.Our Fatal Magic is a collection of feminist science fiction by contemporary artist Tai Shani. Foregrounding explorations of sensation, experience, and interiority, these twelve fantastical prose vignettes refract their ideas through a series of curious characters, from Medieval Mystics to Cubes of Flesh, from Sirens to Neanderthal Hermaphrodites. Drawing on the speculative narrative strategies pioneered by writers like Marge Piercy, Octavia Butler and others, Our Fatal Magic metabolizes new and necessary fictions from feminist and queer theory to propose an erotic, often violent space of critique in which gender constructs are destabilized, alternative histories imagined, and post-patriarchal futures proposed.

A new way of thinking about data science and data ethics that is informed by the ideas of intersectional feminism.

Today, data science is a form of power. It has been used to expose injustice, improve health outcomes, and topple governments. But it has also been used to discriminate, police, and surveil. This potential for good, on the one hand, and harm, on the other, makes it essential to ask: Data science by whom? Data science for whom? Data science with whose interests in mind? The narratives around big data and data science are overwhelmingly white, male, and techno-heroic. In

B>A collection that tracks the astonishing impact of one vernacular aesthetic category--the cute--on postwar and contemporary art./b>br>br>The Cute tracks the astonishing impact of a single aesthetic category on post-war and contemporary art, and on the vast range of cultural practices and discourses on which artists draw. From robots and cat videos to ice cream socials, The Cute explores the ramifications of an aesthetic of or about minorness--or what is perceived to be diminutive, subordinate, and above all, unthreatening--on the shifting forms and contents of art today. This anthology is the first of its kind to show how contemporary artists have worked on and transformed the cute, in ways that not only complexify its meaning, but also reshape their own artistic practices.br>;br>Artists surveyed includebr>Peggy Ahwesh, Cosima Von Bonin, Nayland Blake, Paul Chan, Adrian Howells, Juliana Huxtable, Larry Johnson, Mike Kelley, Dean Kenning, Wyndham Lewis, Jeff Koons, Sean-Kierre Lyons, Mammalian Diving Reflex, Alake Shilling, Annette Messager, Mariko Mori, Takashi Murakami, Charlemagne Palestine, David Robbins, Mika Rottenberg, Allen Ruppersberg, Jack Smith, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol, Yoshitomo Narabr>;br>Writers includebr>Sasha Archibald, Roland Barthes, Leigh Claire La Berge, Lauren Berlant, Ian Bogost, Jennifer Doyle, Lee Edelman, Adrienne Edwards, Rosalind Galt, E.H. Gombrich, Lewis Gordon, Rosmarie Garland Thompson, Stephen Jay Gould, Wayne Koestenbaum, Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy, Lori Merish, John Morreall, Juliane Rebentisch, Frances Richard, Carrie Rickey, Friedrich Schiller, Peter Schjeldahl, Kanako Shiokawa, Susan Stewart, Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy, Kevin Young Lire la suite Fermer

Aldo Rossi, a practicing architect and leader of the Italian architectural movement La Tendenza , is also one of the most influential theorists writing today. The Architecture of the City is his major work of architectural and urban theory. In part a protest against functionalism and the Modern Movement, in part an attempt to restore the craft of architecture to its position as the only valid object of architectural study, and in part an analysis of the rules and forms of the city''s construction, the book has become immensely popular among architects and design students.

Essays, conversations, selected texts, and a rich collection of thought-provoking artworks celebrate a revolution in bio art.

The texts and artworks in Symbionts provoke a necessary conversation about our species and its relation to the planet. Are we merely "mammalian weeds," as evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis put it? Or are we partners in producing and maintaining the biosphere, as she also suggested? Symbionts reflects on a recent revolution in bio art that departs from the late-1990s code-oriented experiments to embrace entanglement and symbiosis ("with-living"). Combining documentation of contemporary artworks with texts by leading thinkers, Symbionts, which accompanies an exhibition at MIT List Visual Arts Center, offers an expansive view of humanity's place on the planet.

Color reproductions document works by international artists that respond to the revelation that planetary microbes construct and maintain our biosphere. A central essay by coeditor Caroline Jones sets their work in the context of larger discussions around symbiosis; additional essays, an edited roundtable discussion, and selected excerpts follow. Contributors explore, among other things, the resilient ecological knowledge of indigenous scholars and artists, and "biofiction," a term coined by Jones to describe the work of such theoretical biologists as Jacob von Uexku¨ll as well as the witty parafictions of artist Anicka Yi. A playful glossary puts scientific terms in conversation with cultural ones. Lire la suite Fermer

B>Why, surrounded by screens and smart devices, we feel a deep connection to the analog--vinyl records, fountain pens, Kodak film, and other nondigital tools./b>br>br>Were surrounded by screens; our music comes in the form of digital files; we tap words into a notes app. Why do we still crave the realness of analog, seeking out vinyl records, fountain pens, cameras with film? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Robert Hassan explores our deep connection to analog technology. Our analog urge, he explains, is about what weve lost from our technological past, something thats not there in our digital present. Were nostalgic for what we remember indistinctly as somehow more real, more human. Surveying some of the major developments of analog technology, Hassan shows us whats been lost with the digital.br>;br>Along the way, he discusses the appeal of the 2011 silent, black-and-white Oscar-winning film The Artisu>t/u>; the revival of the non-e-book book; the early mechanical clocks that enforced prayer and worship times; and the programmable loom. He describes the effect of the typewriter on Nietzsches productivity, the pivotal invention of the telegraph, and the popularity of the first televisions despite their iffy picture quality.br>The transition to digital is marked by the downgrading of human participation in the human-technology relationship. We have unwittingly unmoored ourselves, Hassan warns, from the anchors of analog technology and the natural world. Our analog nostalgia is for those ancient aspects of who and what we are. Lire la suite Fermer

A concise introduction to the history and methods of espionage, illustrated by spy stories from antiquity to todays high-tech world.

Espionage is one of the most secret of human activities. It is also, as the popularity of spy stories suggests, one of the most intriguing. This book pulls the veil back on the real world of espionage, revealing how spying actually works. In a refreshingly clear, concise manner, Kristie Macrakis guides readers through the shadowy world of espionage, from the language and practice of spycraft to its role in international politics, its bureaucratic underpinnings, and its transformation in light of modern technology. Espionage is a mirror of society and human foibles with the added cloak of secrecy and deception. Accordingly,

Cutting through the hype, a practical guide to using artificial intelligence for business benefits and competitive advantage. In The AI Advantage , Thomas Davenport offers a guide to using artificial intelligence in business. He describes what technologies are available and how companies can use them for business benefits and competitive advantage. He cuts through the hype of the AI craze--remember when it seemed plausible that IBM''s Watson could cure cancer?--to explain how businesses can put artificial intelligence to work now, in the real world. His key recommendation: don''t go for the "moonshot" (curing cancer, or synthesizing all investment knowledge); look for the "low-hanging fruit" to make your company more efficient. Davenport explains that the business value AI offers is solid rather than sexy or splashy. AI will improve products and processes and make decisions better informed--important but largely invisible tasks. AI technologies won''t replace human workers but augment their capabilities, with smart machines to work alongside smart people. AI can automate structured and repetitive work; provide extensive analysis of data through machine learning ("analytics on steroids"), and engage with customers and employees via chatbots and intelligent agents. Companies should experiment with these technologies and develop their own expertise. Davenport describes the major AI technologies and explains how they are being used, reports on the AI work done by large commercial enterprises like Amazon and Google, and outlines strategies and steps to becoming a cognitive corporation. This book provides an invaluable guide to the real-world future of business AI. A book in the Management on the Cutting Edge series, published in cooperation with MIT Sloan Management Review .
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B>A philosophical guide to passengerhood, with reflections on time, space, existence, boredom, our sense of self, and our sense of senses./b>br>br>While there are entire bookstore sections--and even entire bookstores--devoted to travel, there have been few books on the universal experience of being a passenger. With this book, philosopher Michael Marder fills the gap, offering a philosophical guide to passengerhood. He takes readers from ticketing and preboarding (preface and introduction) through a series of stops and detours (reflections on topics including time, space, existence, boredom, our sense of self, and our sense of senses) to destination and disembarking (conclusion).;br>;br>Marder finds that the experience of passengers in the twenty-first century is experience itself, stretching well beyond railroad tracks and airplane flight patterns. On his journey through passengerhood, he considers, among many other things, passenger togetherness, which goes hand in hand with passenger loneliness; flyover country and the idea of placeness; and Descartes in an airplane seat. He tells us that the word metaphor means transport in Greek and discusses the gray area between literalness and metaphoricity; explains the connection between reading and riding; and ponders the difference between destination and destiny. Finally, a Beckettian disembarking: you might not be able to disembark, yet you must disembark. After the voyage in the world ends, the journey of understanding begins. Lire la suite Fermer

B>How we can create artificial intelligence with broad, robust common sense rather than narrow, specialized expertise./b>br>br>It’s sometime in the not-so-distant future, and you send your fully autonomous self-driving car to the store to pick up your grocery order. The car is endowed with as much capability as an artificial intelligence agent can have, programmed to drive better than you do. But when the car encounters a traffic light stuck on red, it just sits there—indefinitely. Its obstacle-avoidance, lane-following, and route-calculation capacities are all irrelevant; it fails to act because it lacks the common sense of a human driver, who would quickly figure out what’s happening and find a workaround. In Machines like Us, Ron Brachman and Hector Levesque—both leading experts in AI—consider what it would take to create machines with common sense rather than just the specialized expertise of today’s AI systems. br> br>Using the stuck traffic light and other relatable examples, Brachman and Levesque offer an accessible account of how common sense might be built into a machine. They analyze common sense in humans, explain how AI over the years has focused mainly on expertise, and suggest ways to endow an AI system with both common sense and effective reasoning. Finally, they consider the critical issue of how we can trust an autonomous machine to make decisions, identifying two fundamental requirements for trustworthy autonomous AI systems: having reasons for doing what they do, and being able to accept advice. Both in the end are dependent on having common sense. Lire la suite Fermer

B>A new version of the classic and widely used text with implementations in JavaScript./b>br>br>Ever since the publication of its first edition in 1984, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) has influenced computer science curricula around the world. Widely adopted as a textbook, the book has its origins in a popular entry-level computer science course taught by Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman at MIT. SICP introduces the reader to central ideas of computation by establishing a series of mental models for computation. Earlier editions used the programming language Scheme in their program examples. This new edition has been adapted for JavaScript.br> br>The first three chapters of SICP cover programming concepts that are common to all modern high-level programming languages. Chapters four and five, which used Scheme to formulate language processors for Scheme, required revision. Chapter four offers substantial new material, in particular an introduction to the notion of program parsing. The JavaScript subset used this edition is designed to be just expressive enough for presenting the ideas of SICP with a conciseness and precision that matches the original. A JavaScript sublanguage and function library has been designed for each chapter, and a web-based programming environment, Source Academy, has been developed to strengthen the students’ adherence to the chosen sublanguage. Lire la suite Fermer

B>A guide for research economists: how to write papers, give talks, navigate the peer-review process, advise students, and more.br>;/b>br>br>Newly minted research economists are equipped with a PhDs worth of technical and scientific expertise but often lack some of the practical tools necessary for doing economics. With this book, economics professor Marc Bellemare breaks down the components of doing research economics and examines each in turn: communicating your research findings in a paper; presenting your findings to other researchers by giving a talk; submitting your paper to a peer-reviewed journal; funding your research program through grants (necessary more often than not for all social scientists); knowing what kind of professional service opportunities to pursue; and advising PhD, masters, and undergraduate students.;br>;br>With the increasing data availability and decreasing computational costs, economics has taken an empirical turn in recent decades. Academic economics is no longer the domain only of the theoretical; many young economists choose applied fields when the time comes to specialize. Yet there is no manual for surviving and thriving as a professional research economist. Doing Economics fills that gap, offering an essential guide for research economists at any stage of their careers.br>; Lire la suite Fermer

B>Discover the hidden electrical world inside your nervous system using DIY, hands-on experiments, for all ages. No MD or PhD required!/b>br>br>The workings of the brain are mysterious: What are neural signals? What do they mean? How do our senses really sense? How does our brain control our movements? What happens when we meditate?br>;br>Techniques to record signals from living brains were once thought to be the realm of advanced university labs .;.;. but not anymore! This book allows anyone to participate in the discovery of neuroscience through hands-on experiments that record the hidden electrical world beneath our skin and skulls. In How Your Brain Works, neuroscientists Greg Gage and Tim Marzullo offer a practical guide--accessible and useful to readers from middle schoolers to college undergraduates to curious adults--for learning about the brain through hands-on experiments.br>;br>Armed with some DIY electrodes, readers will get to see what brain activity really looks like through simple neuroscience experiments. Written by two neuroscience researchers who invented open-source techniques to record signals from neurons, muscles, hearts, eyes, and brains, How Your Brain Works includes more than forty-five experiments to gain a deeper understanding of your brain.br>;br>Using a homemade scientific instrument called a SpikerBox, readers can see how fast neural signals travel by recording electrical signals from an earthworm. Or, turning themselves into subjects, readers can strap on some electrode stickers to detect the nervous system in their own bodies. Each chapter begins by describing some phenomenology of a particular area of neuroscience, then guides readers step-by-step through an experiment, and concludes with a series of open-ended questions to inspire further investigation. Some experiments use invertebrates (such as insects), and the book provides a thoughtful framework for the ethical use of these animals in education. How Your Brain Works offers fascinating reading for students at any level, curious readers, and scientists interested in using electrophysiology in their research or teaching. Lire la suite Fermer

An overview of recycling as an activity and a process, following different materials through the waste stream. Is there a point to recycling? Is recycling even good for the environment? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Finn Arne Jørgensen answers (drumroll, please): it depends. From a technical point of view, recycling is a series of processes--collecting, sorting, processing, manufacturing. Recycling also has a cultural component; at its core, recycling is about transformation and value, turning material waste into something useful--plastic bags into patio furniture, plastic bottles into T-shirts. Jørgensen offers an accessible and engaging overview of recycling as an activity and as a process at the intersection of the material and the ideological. Jørgensen follows a series of materials as they move back and forth between producer and consumer, continually transforming in form and value, in a never-ceasing journey toward becoming waste. He considers organic waste and cultural contamination; the history of recyclable writing surfaces from papyrus to newsprint; discarded clothing as it moves from the the Global North to the Global South; the shifting fate of glass bottles; the efficiency of aluminum recycling; the many types of plastic and the difficulties of informed consumer choice; e-waste and technological obsolescence; and industrial waste. Finally, re-asking the question posed by John Tierney in an infamous 1996 New York Times article, "is recycling garbage?" Jørgensen argues that recycling is necessary--as both symbolic action and physical activity that has a tangible effect on the real world. Lire la suite Fermer